PowerPoint 2013 For Dummies
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Nothing looks more amateurish than objects dropped randomly on a PowerPoint 2013 slide with no apparent concern for how they line up with each other. The Drawing Tools tab includes an Align button that brings up a menu with the following commands:

  • Align Left

  • Align Center

  • Align Right

  • Align Top

  • Align Middle

  • Align Bottom

  • Distribute Horizontally

  • Distribute Vertically

The first three commands (Align Left, Center, and Right) align items horizontally; the next three commands (Align Top, Middle, and Bottom) align items vertically.

You can also distribute several items so that they’re spaced evenly. Select the items that you want to distribute, click the Draw button, choose Align or Distribute, and then choose Distribute Horizontally or Distribute Vertically. PowerPoint then adjusts the spacing of the objects that appear between the two outermost objects selected.

Another quick way to align one item to another is to simply drag the first item until it is close to the alignment you want. When the item reaches the correct alignment, a magic guideline will appear to indicate that you have found the correct alignment. If you release the mouse button while this magic guideline is visible, the object will be snapped into alignment.

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Doug Lowe is the bestselling author of more than 40 For Dummies books. He's covered everything from Microsoft Office to creating web pages to technologies such as Java and ASP.NET, and has written several editions of both PowerPoint For Dummies and Networking For Dummies.

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